Dancing in Life's Whirling Embrace!

May 2019

May 28, 2019

Leviticus ends reminding us of where we have come from and what all these prescriptions and proscriptions for behavior are about: once we were enslaved and now we are free. Sure there’s the at-the-time-it-was-written-traditional blessing-curse formula (do this and receive awesomeness, do that and suffer), which today we might wonder a bit more as to how that works with a Holy One setting free people forth to learn how to live faithfully, mistakes and trials included. Don’t get sucked into literal reading here, because to do so means a couple of real theological problems: (1) the idea that suffering and trials are always our own making, so very obviously for most of us not to always be the case, only a sometimes thing; (2) the corollary to this idea which is often referred to today as the prosperity gospel - if you’re living right, nothing wrong will happen and riches will be yours (which places the blame in the whole life has suffering we can’t control reality smack back on ourselves). What is theologically critical here are the two frames at the beginning and the end of the blessing-curse formula: you are a free people to live faithfully and when you mess up, repent and make amends, the Holy is right here, upholding the covenant that already exists, waiting for your return.

Throughout Leviticus, the assembly of writings tries to answer: what does it mean to be a free people who live humbly and faithfully with our G-d? Free people have choices. Serving the Holy is different from enslavement to the Holy because of one major condition: we choose. We choose whether and how to pursue these best understandings of the writers of what it means to be live humbly and faithfully. And, necessarily, we’re probably going to have our differences with some aspects or recommendations and not with others. I have no use for the proscription on same-gender sexual relationships or for the implicit approval of slavery in accepting slaves as tithe offerings but I do find the call to love and protect the resident alien, love the stranger, and love one another, and Sabbath, fallow years, and Jubilee to be enormously compelling in sorting out some of the inequities in society. Why do I feel comfortable, as a free person trying to live faithfully, choosing some of these understandings over others? Because I am applying the reason I’m endowed with to repeated rules that wind through the Torah (the Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), namely the call to compassion and equity and that how we treat strangers and neighbors is how we are treating G-d. In spiritual, emotional, or physical slavery we don’t have choices in what we do, or what happens to our bodies, or how we treat others (as a common tactic of enforcing lack of trust in enslavement is to force people to attack or abuse other enslaved peoples or suffer even more directly or watch family and friends suffer additionally for refusing to comply). But as free people, we do have choices and need to employ those decision-making powers we have, which include consulting scholarship and arguing things out and applying some compassion and heart tests to our actions. And, as free people, sometimes we will choose badly or choose well and execute that choice less skillfully and end up needing to repent and make amends, grateful for the Holy upholding this covenant.

Now this section of Leviticus, 26:3-27:34, like others, presents some other problems to us in our day and age. One of them is the literal devaluing of women as the tithing instructions ending Leviticus tells us. First, if we’re pursuing care of one another as a way we care for the Holy, then we are not going to make offerings of slaves because we are not going to hold people in slavery. (There’s a lot of really interesting Torah and Bible scholarship on this issue, and if you’re wanting to learn more about the limits on slavery and the consideration of indentured servitude or limited periods of service, then dive on in.) Secondly, women are specifically named as less valuable than men as offerings. Also, most of the blessings named in the blessing section and most of the curses specifically fall on what at the time would be masculine pursuits and concerns. Noting, for example, that the staff of life will be broken and ten women’s labors of making bread will not feed you assumes the reader/listener is male and they’re not involved in making bread, or the text would read ten bakers’ labors in making bread. (Again, lots of great feminist scholarship to study on these issues.) How do we read ourselves back into the texts when we’re not explicitly named or when our identity is explicitly named as something less than good enough?

I had two major influences on my approach to Scriptural reading and interpretation before I ever reached high school, college or seminary to study different practices like literary and textual criticism, historical-archeological criticism, and any number of other forms of study and approaches that don’t assume a naive reading of the text will take you very far faithfully. One practice was under the direction of my religious studies teacher, taking the weekly lection in Catholic parochial middle school and turning it into another episode of a soap opera series. At the time, I didn’t even know the genre of soap operas, so I had to watch a few before I understood what was wanted. However, viewing the writings and poetry and stories as at least as meaningful and dramatic as a telenovela or soap opera has continued to shape my approach to studying these texts for meaning in today’s world. The other was reading choose-your-own-adventure stories and playing Dungeons & Dragons in my same middle school years. I name this approach second to the first because once I appreciated how much drama and meaning could be drawn from the texts, I of course was influenced in gaming that. Those games and stories make the gamers and readers authorities in what is happening. Sure, you can’t safely control the outcomes — rather like life — but choices have consequences — rather like life. Perceiving risk, listening/reading attentively for hints of what might occur, and trying and failing only to start all over again is good training for approaching these texts. As adults, we’re constantly weighing and perceiving risk, seeking hints of what’s ahead, and trying and failing (although hopefully not killing our characters or others from poor judgment). As you read through the sacred texts, you’ll notice the same themes: people seek to understand, make choices, and not uncommonly, fail and have to try again.

Approaching these sacred texts as living tales with history, context, and historical meaning was something I learned later, but are excellent models to help us deepen, broaden, and stretch our faithful understanding of these texts. The various liberation critical approaches also regularly invite us to read ourselves back into the texts, especially when we and our experiences are excluded or named as other. Also in clinical pastoral education, I had to name scriptural events and stories that were similar to circumstances I and the people I cared for or worked alongside were experiencing, again seeking the relevance of ancient texts applied to today, which is another good way to find ourselves within the texts. Both approaches make a lot of sense to me because I already knew reading these texts as having sources of meaning and living drama, transmitted and reflected over the millennia by real people. And that rather frequently means reading myself into these texts when I am not named or even directly excluded. Fortunately, that was a skill I had already developed, from listening to popular music and reading books where there would be no characters who were like me. Gaming, choose-your-own-adventure and turning scripture into soap operas taught me to make space in these texts for myself and for others I knew who were excluded. The more academic forms of criticism sharpened those tools and gave me some additional understandings, all of which challenge, deepen, and strengthen my adult faith in relationship with these texts.

We are free people making choices in how we pursue, understand, interpret, and apply these texts to our lives. If we pursue the larger call to justice and equity and loving one another as we love ourselves or the Holy (themes resounding throughout Torah), that means necessarily there’s room for all of us in these texts to show up, reflections of the Holy that is far bigger than any one of us, or any one culture and time, splendid in our diversity. So yes, I’m going to put my queer, wheelchair-using, ordained, knitting, singing, laughing, loving self into the middle of these texts. I’m also loved by the Holy and part of this diverse and amazing creation. You belong there too, however you are, in these stories and practices of seeking to risk faithfully day by day in living humbly, justly, and lovingly, knowing every stranger and neighbor as another face of G-d, wherever we are and wherever we go. If you want these texts to speak to today, they can. If you want to pursue a relationship with the Holy, you can. Don’t let the transmission of these texts or their reflection of a particular historical understanding of what it means to live faithfully with the Holy cast you out of choosing your faithful life. We choose, with heart and with reason, bowing to the spiritual ancestors who did the best they could with their own understanding, and to some of our ancestors who did the worst they could do reading a lot of people out and transmitting those traditions. We choose, taking what we can with our own limited understanding and offering these texts forward to the future for their eventual wrestling, reading, tending, interpreting, and choosing, as free people do.

May 21, 2019

Americans have a lot of debt. The national debt is above $22 trillion and consumer debt is around $14 trillion. The ACLU’s report, “A Pound of Flesh: The Criminalization of Private Debt” which found people pursued for as little as $2.00 (well below the prosecutable threshold), names the additional fees and interest folks end up paying that make them unable to pay for life’s basics. The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) found that, “In more than 1,000 cases reviewed…many were struggling to recover after the loss of a job, mounting medical bills, the death of a family member, a divorce, or an illness. They included retirees or people with disabilities who are unable to work." (p.7)

The truth is that one of the ways America practices injustice is to engage people in terrible debt when they’re trying to make ends meet. This increase in suffering is neither just nor compassionate. This is not a new problem. When we speak of theological redemption (who will save us from this terrible suffering), we are literally imagining the Holy as the one who cleans up our debts, recognizing a world in which we may be good people trying to live good lives and we still end up in difficult to terrible straits. Leviticus 25:1-26:2 (Parashat Be-har) addresses this reality of inequity and suffering, when our communities and economies become not about living well together, everyone with their basic needs met and pursuing lives of purpose and meaning, but when the purpose and meaning of the majority’s lives are turned into enriching the minority.

The theological and ethical antidote to rampant greed is Sabbath keeping, and not just our personal and spiritual Sabbaths. The land itself and all who work it is expected to rest in the seventh year and then in the fiftieth year there is a jubilee where society resets itself, easing and erasing debts, so that neighbor shall not wrong neighbor (Lev. 25:14-15). There are specific obligations to be redeemers of others who are related to you, and then expectations where you cannot further take advantage of that person (Lev. 25:35-37-46). Debt bondage has limits, and the experience of debt bondage has strong expectations of equitable and compassionate treatment, so that “..no one shall rule ruthlessly over the other.” (Lev. 25:46). And the jubilee year is the generational failsafe, offering freedom for those families who could not be redeemed in any other way. The Sabbath years and the Jubilee are ways of limiting greed and cruelty to one another, and there are good reasons why they are appealing practices today.

When we fail to live generously and compassionately with one another and we allow our society to exploit and steal the lives of the people exploited, we are failing how we are called spiritually. Loving the Holy means loving one another, not for what you can do for me to make my life easier or richer, but just because we are in the life together. Loving the Holy means leaning into extravagant actions like forgiving debts and decent actions like treating people who come afoul of debt due to life’s challenges as though they are still people worthy of respect, dignity, and compassion, because they are. Sure we need to be responsible with our lives, but let’s remember what the ACLU found: most of the people entangled in the criminal justice system for being poor were facing life crises that can come to any one: loss of a job, divorce, serious illness or disability, or a beloved family member dying. That is, they are not prosecuted because they are bad people. They are prosecuted because they are experiencing distress and suffering and had not economic net to hold them.

If we’re really going to take loving one another seriously, we need practices of debt forgiveness due to horrible life events. We need to support and care for one another when we’re in trial and trouble, and not be sent to court or levied fines and arrest records to add to our misery. Where is the Sabbath of rest for those weary and heavy-laden? Where is the Jubilee for those suffering from an inequitable, unjust economic system? Rather than worrying about our eventual redemption theologically, we could pick up our responsibilities right here and now to release those captive to debt because of miserable life events, and actually bother to care for one another with love, compassion, equity, and justice.

In the coming week, may we consider the debts others may have to us and the possibilities for debt reduction or forgiveness. May we consider how we can join together pooling resources to relieve someone else’s debt. And may we advocate for a more loving, compassionate, and equitable society, for indeed, we are called to be redeemers of one another. The Holy may be our ultimate redeemer, but Leviticus and the Prophets are very clear that we are called here and now to redeem one another first.

May 17, 2019

In our 24/7/365 world, where there is always more to be done, where we’re connected globally and aware of terrors, disasters, and troubles beyond our neighborhoods, where many struggle to sleep even when they’re exhausted, and many struggle to find anything smile-worthy in a day, and many of us have even forgotten how to dance freely and gladly, it can take an enormous effort to stop. However difficult it is for us now, human beings apparently have struggled with stopping for millennia. In the effort to survive and get by, we have a tendency to lose what we don’t nurture and repeatedly, what we lose when we’re stressed, exhausted, and suppressed or oppressed is what nourishes our hearts, what opens our minds, and what makes life sweet and worthy. Every religious tradition calls us to patterns of rest and involves ritual life that invites us to awe, repentance, and surprising joy. Chapter 23 of Leviticus names those times of sacred observance and festivals for the Jewish people, teaching how and when to make some space for awe, repentance, and delight.

One of the odd things about being so focused on work and survival is that to enter the spaces of wonder, seeking forgiveness, and happiness we may very well need to create, curate, cultivate, and explore practices that, as we receive them, may feel like unyielding rules. I find it interesting when I observe myself chafing at the practices of holy rest. Turning my attention away from that pile of work to do back to wisdom, reverence, making amends, and generous, regenerative laughter and love might seem easy to do. Some days that is so, and sometimes I have a chance to laugh at how stressed I am as I keep wanting to skip over the practice of observing life’s spaciousness and blessings. When I can enter the grace of sacred time and the practices to ensure I’m noticing violets blooming and the scent of rain-soaked air and this amazing person next to me I can find more spaciousness in every day. But it takes this daily spiritual practice, this weekly setting aside of a day of reverence and rest, these seasons of repentance and seasons of delight and thanksgiving to remind me, retune me, and reconnect me with life’s blessings.

I am a person of the culture and world I live in, which is rushed, focused on efficiency, and sharply, grindingly competitive. I am also a person of this sacred world in which I live, which is full of beauty, love, wonder, wisdom, and the chance in each moment to bring more blessings for this world into being. Tending a love-soaked and generously compassionate way of life means also setting down the troubles I carry, the worries I fuss through, the work of ordinary nights and ordinary days, and dwell a bit in the green pastures by cool waters, noticing this abundant cup of being served every day, that is just a song, a prayer, a meditative breath away from the bustle and hustle.

My hope and prayer for each and all of us is that we can practice attending reverence daily, weekly, and in our sacred seasons, in our beautiful diversity, with our different spiritual languages and rituals, our differing understandings of what times to observe and how to observe them. And as we do so, may we find surprising joy, more generosity and courage for repentance and making amends, and more delight and blessings to share with shouts of gladness and songs of love.